Halloween

It looks like it's been a WHILE since I posted anything. Seeing as it's Halloween I have been painting a few spooky type things here are a few that I could get a partially decent photo of, sometimes it seems getting a good photo is harder than doing the painting

The Bay

This was a great place to paint, it was near the water at Braddock's Bay Marina. I was Painting along with some friends Gordon, Josie, and Enrique and thw weather was perfect, we setup around 6:pm and set to it.

This is about 10"X20" and I used some nice cold-wax medium and a knife to paint most of it.

Pinnacle Hill

I painted this at Cobbs Hill park, It was Awesome weather and Everyone had a great time

Rhia

This is another painting of Rhia, She was the model for Apperition a couple of posts ago

Outside

Here is a little 11X14
I painted at Genesee Park.

apparition

16x20

This painting seems more of a suggestion of a person, with so much of the original ground showing through (upper right and her right arm) and the sketchy qualities, it seems just a hint of a presence.

sisters

Here are two paintings I just did of sisters that model.
each was 3 hours and 16X20 It was fun trying to capture theapparent strength in these two young ladies

JJ II

This is the results from having JJ model for a second time. I think I was more comfortable with her structure, from painting her the previous, week and let more of her personality come through, which is always a good thing to happen

JJ

This model's name is JJ, and she was dyn-O-mite, she was here for two weeks, I will post the second painting when I go back to the studio next week.

Blue Iris

This painting was really fun to work on, I liked the echo of the flowing lines of the vase and flower's stem, the contrasting texture of the flower and the marble bracelet, and the analogous color of the vase and the flower

The Purist

Doing the silver ball was so much fun to do I decided to do another highly reflective surface. This is 14"X18"


I really love how abstract some parts can be, but when viewed at the proper distance the whole becomes convincing, for example:

Silver ball on Pencil Case

I have seen several paintings of a silver ball and liked the idea so I tried it myself. It was a fun painting, just trying to get the correct shape, color and tone without really knowing WHAT it was I was representing and trying to have faith that it would look correct at the end.

All in all I am pretty happy with how it turned out. I would love to hear your comments.

Silver ball on Pencil Case 16"X12"

Remembrance

This Painting is an attempt at something a little different, I was thinking about several instances of the same persona, I did this over 4 sessions from life. All in all, I think is was an interesting experiment that could be explored more.

This reminds me of that saying: may you reach always exceed your grasp

Aluminum

A generous friend gave me a few aluminum honeycomb panels to paint on. This piece was my first use of these panels, it is about 9"X16"

I really liked this surface to work on and will be using it again.

The Model's daughter

I painted this in life class last night. This young lady is the daughter of another model the class uses, she is not only beautiful, but was a wonderful sitter. I was trying for a pensive looking painting and pushed the blues to help this along.

Purple Passion

This painting is from last weeks life session, it's another 3 hour study

Boit Daughters

This was an excersize for seeing masses. I copied an 8" printout of John Sargent's Boit Daughters standing 5' away from the source while painting so as to not deal with detail.
The actual size of the painting is about 4-1/2" square

Final Light

Apparently as a tribute to Halloween, the lighting on our model the other day was pretty creepy.
it was fun to paint with such drastic lighting, causing shadows in the least place you expect them too.
it's about 16"X16"

Picture book

in this painting, from life, I really pushed the chroma hard, I went crazy with the background color to see if it would make the overly saturated flesh colors look feasible. Although this example is not that successful, I think this idea may have some merit. What do you think ???

I have often heard that painting in a "rim-lighting" situation is pretty difficult... This painting showed me just how true that is.

A Painting by Mead Schaeffer called Monte Cristo appeared one day in an art related magazine, I never had seen this painting before and for some reason fell in love with it and HAD to paint myself a copy that very evening.






here is my version, in oils

Not much going on paint related lately, think I may have bronchitis or something :(

Weekly paint class was canceled and we are 1 session into a 3-4 session sitting, so nothing to show on that front. I will leave you with a Painting I copied and donated to a United Way fundraiser.

THE GREAT WAR.

Everything we see obstructs our view of what is behind it, and whatever that is, is precisly what we want to see.



To quote the original artist,
René Magritte

"My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'What does that mean?'. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable. "

Copying the great masters is a fun way to learn how to paint. A good way to avoid worrying too much about getting a decent painting is to do a crop study, here are a few I did of Bouguereau.

This painting is of last weeks model, a young girl, 16 I think, who seemed less than enthused to be there (like most 16 year olds) I think I captured that attitude so am fairly happy with the outcome, although there a few edges that are harder than I would like.


16"x20"
3 hour from life

It's nice to be able to exploit the strong diagnols and sharp lines of a Man's face in a painting. This particular 3 hour study from life shows just that.

The jaw, nose, forehead, eyebrows, cheek, and neck are all very angular hardly any curves at all.

Compare that to the study below of his wife who posed for us the week before he did, all the features are round and curvy, just how we like our women.

This angular V.S. round is a long used tool the artist has used to help establish gender in painting, or sculpture for that matter.

These two older

paintings really show this. Both of these paintings are of the same model, one by me, the other by a friend at class. Notice how the gender is ambiguous on the painting with the strong angles, the other, curvier painting, is definitely a female. This, I believe, creates more tension in the angular painting and therefore it is the stronger painting. Although more subtle, similar devices were used in the Mona Lisa, creating a more dynamic painting.

Although I've been concentrating mostly on human subjects lately, I thought I would share a picture of a great blue heron I painted not too long ago. This was the first painting I sold, and was a commisioned piece. I first provided the client with a charcoal sketch of the bird in the wild (as painted), and also one of a more "portrait" type shot of just the heron's head and feathers in what looked like a glamor pose.












Oil 18"x14"

A few months back I was in a small local art show, it was my first public showing of my works and I was pretty nervous putting myself out there like that, firsts tend to be like that. Surprizingly, I won two awards for two different paintings, here is one of them.
This oil painting was pretty hard for me to photograph correctly since the size is larger than I am used to. This is about 46" X 29" done in oils

I called this "Stark Ratio" because of the high contrast in values and also, the very soft dress is contrasted sharply with the very "manly" depiction of the features..is it a man..is it a woman, I thought that this ambiguousness would add tension...did it?... you tell me.

here is a recent two hour study created from life, it's 16X20. lovely girl, and I am pretty happy with the outcome, it is not technically perfect, but has an indescribable "mood" to it.

The last two life painting sessions were of a lovely model in an exotic head scarf from India, holding a silver pitcher. From where I was in the room though, I simply could not pass up the obvious Vermeer reference and decided to do only the head.

this is 16"X20" oil on panel, painted from life.
It looks like the head dress is kind of off perspective although I believe it may have been wrapped differently each session

Painting from Life is extremely important.
For me it is essential, that as a realistic painter, I go directly to nature to learn how she works. I do not want to paint a picture of a photographic representation's of nature I want to paint paintings of MY representation's of nature... Big difference, after all I have two eyes.


24"X20" Oil on linen

This absolutely stunning model was with my painting group for two, three hour sessions and even with that amount of time I still did not feel I had long enough. I focused mostly on the face and feel it is pretty successful, although looking at it now I wish I would not have left her left hand looking like a crab claw.

They say that painting portraits is one of the most difficult tasks for the painter, in fact J. S. Sargent (one of my favorite painters) said "Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend" With that in mind I would like to share with you the last few friends I've lost

These two paintings were actually supposed to be only one, our model turned out to be a little bit too much of a mover for me, I decided to do seperate paintings over the 2 3-hours live sessions from different vantage points.
This is a 3 hour 16X20 Oil painting from life

This next particular portrait was interesting in that I was facing directly into the spotlight, giving me an interesting lighting setup, as well as forcing me to squint even more than I normally do while painting. This is another 3 hour 16X20 Oil painting

Here is a small painting I did on paper. It is 5"x8" and took about an hour to complete, I have not had much time to paint lately and thought doing this was a good way to keep in practice.

This particular painting was my first plein air painting, which is just a fancy way of saying "I painted it outside" it is about 14"X18" and done in oil, painted with a combination of brushes, knives and rags, the local insects helped as well.





These woods are near Turning Point park in Rochester, NY. I wanted to capture the wonderful dappled light showing through the forest, it was challenging, considering the lighting was changing constantly. I was lucky enough to also have a figure to include, creating a more enjoyable painting .